Posted on 12/26/2024 8:38:52 PM PST by Kazan
Terrorism -- i.e., the use of violence on civilians and civilian targets for a political purpose -- is an act of weakness, not strength. A couple of incidents -- the crash of an Azerbaijani airplane in Aktau, Kazakhstan, and the sinking of the Oboronlogistica, a Russian state-controlled company that operated the Ursa Major freighter, in the Mediterranean Sea between Spain and Algeria -- are characterized as terrorist attacks. Maybe.
While Western media immediately blamed the plane crash on Russian air defense-missile, the video and the wreckage do not support that claim. Yes, the fuselage was peppered with shrapnel holes, but those happened several minutes before the plane crashed. If the plane had been hit by a missile, it would not have continued flying with wings intact, which it did, as you can see in the following video (at link).
Whatever brought the plane down was not a heat seeking missile -- the engines are still attached to the wing and the plane is not on fire. It does not appear that the crash was caused by a mechanical malfunction. The West hopped on this event early, hoping to score some propaganda points against Russia. But there is no evidence yet to support the claim that this was the result of a Russian battery firing on the civilian airliner.
The sinking of the ship in the Med is a different matter. This bears all the hallmarks of an attack. Sinking the Oboronlogistica does nothing to hurt Russia's maritime capability, and certainly has no bearing on the ground war in Ukraine. Some have suggested the damage was the result of a submarine attack. But the reports of the damage to the ship indicate a different kind of device, such as a limpet mine.
Besides the plane crash and sunk ship, Ukraine's SBU has tried to execute additional attacks in Moscow. During the last couple of days, Russian security services announced the capture of several individuals who had been recruited to carry out terrorist attacks using explosives. Here are two examples:
The FSB in the Moscow region prevented a terrorist attack by Ukrainian special services against the head of a defense enterprise, the Russian Investigative Committee reports.
The service detained seven Russians who were planning to blow up a top manager of a defense enterprise in his personal car using a homemade bomb. Three of the detainees are minors.
Saboteurs tried to give a mined letter to the head of the Archangel project
This was announced by the project curator, who is training UAV operators, Vitaly Romanov. The video shows that the explosive device is hidden in a backlit frame.
📝 “On December 22, they tried to give Mikhail a mined gift certificate. This took place under the control of Russian special services. The courier and the bomber were detained immediately,” he said.
These are moves of desperation. Ukraine is behaving like a punch-drunk fighter, throwing wild punches but landing no meaningful hits. I expect we will see more of this in the coming weeks as Ukrainian prospects on the battlefield become more dire. Speaking of dire, the following video shows a Ukrainian soldier explaining why he surrendered to the Russians (at link).
This soldier's testimony is consistent with the losses reported in Andrei's video -- Ukraine has suffered more than 500,000 killed and wounded in 2024 alone. The numbers are horrific for the Ukrainian side, and these kind of losses are not sustainable. The curtain is coming down on Ukraine.
What’s that noise? Is it yet another body dropping out of a high rise window in Moscow???
Russians denying permission for an emergency landing and forcing the plane out over the sea is not the behavior you would expect from an innocent country dealing with a foreign terrorist incident.
They misspelled Democrat Party.
“ the use of violence on civilians and civilian targets for a political purpose”
This article seems to think Putin/Russia didn’t/isn’t doing that.
Laughable.
Life in Russia for all but the upper class
...continual fear ... of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Some things never change.
The author is a moron. He either has no idea how proximity fusing works, or, in many cases, doesn’t work exactly as planned, OR, assumes his readers are idiots.
Anyone who falls for this can immediately be dismissed as ignorant or just not very smart.
The craziest part of this is, Russia could simply state that “initial investigation points toward a ‘technical problem’ leading to the missile locking onto the wrong target”, or any of a number of reasonable but regrettable snafus (even miscommunication from Grozy airport’s ATC), also pointing out the recent US mishap in the Red Sea. Instead they stonewall and thereby further implicate themselves.
A proximity fused warhead (such as on the Pantsir missiles) would not necessarily have hit an engine. On a rear approach would likely have gone off, on such a large plane, well before it reached an engine. That could easily have caused damage to the hydraulic system that was apparent through the failure of rudder and elevator controls. That was probably the reason for the strange maneuvers of the aircraft as the pilots attempted to use engine and ailerons to regain some control.
Larry Johnson has long been recognized as an ass here. He showed up with the Lyndon LaRouche/VIPS folks like Ray McGovern back in the days of Super Dooper Deep Cover pregnant CIA desk jockey Valerie Plame, who, along with the tea swilling, Clinton-loving former ambassador Joe Wilson, was involved in the forerunner of the Russia hoax against Trump, Nigerflap.
Valerie was doing her best to cover up specialty high tolerance pipe purchases by Iraq, and Joe was trying to downplay efforts by Iraq to acquire uranium in Africa, and Larry Johnson was sliming around with them all for the sake of the 2004 John Kerry campaign.
“Whatever brought the plane down was not a heat seeking missile — the engines are still attached to the wing and the plane is not on fire.”
In the summer of 2001, right before the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, this littl ex-analyst dork Larry C. Johnson penned an op ed for the New York Times about how the terrorist threat was overblown.
His sources haven’t gotten any better since then.
“Laughable.”
Glad to see someone else finds this manure amusing. In a war there is no such thing as terrorism. What they do is an act of war. It is designed to make the war end and if it is accomplishd by the people that live in the country because the price is too high, then it works. Always has. It started with catapults and has increased in capacity since. But I’ll only show the US major attacks as I couldn’t get it all in:
During World War II, the United States and the United Kingdom dropped bombs on Germany, including:
Wilhelmshaven: The United States’ first attack on German territory in 1943, destroying warehouses and factories and in
Hamburg and Dresden: The Allies conducted controversial firebombings on these cities and thousands of civilians were killed or injured. And there were more attacks besides these.
Japan
During World War II, the United States and the United Kingdom dropped bombs on Japan, including:
Doolittle Raid: In April 1942, the United States conducted a small-scale raid on Japan and firebombing: The United States escalated air raids on Japan in October 1944, culminating in widespread firebombing
Atomic bombings: The United States detonated atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, killing between 150,000 and 246,000 people. Ended the war.
Laos
The United States conducted a secret war in Laos, dropping bombs that killed or injured more than 50,000 Lao, 98% of whom were civilians.
Other countries
The United States has also conducted military operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Somalia to name just a few.
The reasoning is that if the people in charge want to be unreasonable and harm, they represent the civilians of the country by the civilians’ choice. So they are part of the equation and the only possible peaceful way to stop the aggression if they do it wihin their own country.
Look at Gaza. Hamas has been in charge of their government since 2006 and can’t be voted out. Their civilians let them get in there and stay, so they are just as much to blame as hamas. And like the US politics of recent years, until it hurts enough, they won’t correct their mistake. And pain of war is many times the only thing they understand.
wy69
“Laughable.”
Glad to see someone else finds this manure amusing. In a war there is no such thing as terrorism. What they do is an act of war. It is designed to make the war end and if it is accomplishd by the people that live in the country because the price is too high, then it works. Always has. It started with catapults and has increased in capacity since. But I’ll only show the US major attacks as I couldn’t get it all in:
During World War II, the United States and the United Kingdom dropped bombs on Germany, including:
Wilhelmshaven: The United States’ first attack on German territory in 1943, destroying warehouses and factories and in
Hamburg and Dresden: The Allies conducted controversial firebombings on these cities and thousands of civilians were killed or injured. And there were more attacks besides these.
Japan
During World War II, the United States and the United Kingdom dropped bombs on Japan, including:
Doolittle Raid: In April 1942, the United States conducted a small-scale raid on Japan and firebombing: The United States escalated air raids on Japan in October 1944, culminating in widespread firebombing
Atomic bombings: The United States detonated atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, killing between 150,000 and 246,000 people. Ended the war.
Laos
The United States conducted a secret war in Laos, dropping bombs that killed or injured more than 50,000 Lao, 98% of whom were civilians.
Other countries
The United States has also conducted military operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Somalia to name just a few.
The reasoning is that if the people in charge want to be unreasonable and harm, they represent the civilians of the country by the civilians’ choice. So they are part of the equation and the only possible peaceful way to stop the aggression if they do it wihin their own country.
Look at Gaza. Hamas has been in charge of their government since 2006 and can’t be voted out. Their civilians let them get in there and stay, so they are just as much to blame as hamas. And like the US politics of recent years, until it hurts enough, they won’t correct their mistake. And pain of war is many times the only thing they understand.
wy69
Denying landing is bullcrap.
Bird strike is how the pilots referred to the situation in exchange with traffic control.
How much does the author know about Russian air defense missiles? Maybe it wasn’t maybe it was a heat speaking missile. Do ground based surface to air missiles even use heat seaking technology? Would the APU in the tail set off heat seaking technology before hitting a main engine?
I don’t trust anything out of either side. And trust even less US based Bidenista sources.
Then if the pilots were correct it wasn’t terrorism on those grounds either. Unless, maybe, if Ukraine has raised a generation of suicide-terrorist birds.
Valerie Plame tried to get her carpet-bagging political foot in the door in New Mexico recently and lost. I bet Martin Heinrich told her what a lame-ass state it is and that it would be a shoe-in for her. They are absolute filth.
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